In these lectures I discuss the possibility that superstrings of cosmic length might exist and be observable. I first review the original idea of cosmic strings arising as gauge theory solitons, and discuss in particular their network properties and the observational bounds that rule out cosmic strings as the principal origin of structure in our universe. I then consider cosmic superstrings, in...

Diffuse interstellar clouds show large abundances of H3 which can be maintained only by a high ionization rate of H2. Cosmic rays are the dominant ionization mechanism in this environment, so the large ionization rate implies a high cosmic-ray flux, and a large amount of energy residing in cosmic rays. In this paper we find that the standard propagated cosmic-ray spectrum predicts an ionization...

We generalize the calculation of cosmic superstring reconnection probability to non-trivial backgrounds. This is done by modeling cosmic strings as wound tachyon modes in the 0B theory, and the spacetime effective action is then used to couple this to background fields. Simple examples are given including trivial and warped compactifications. Generalization to (p, q) strings is discussed.

The nature of SO(3) breaking into its closed subgroups and the emergence of nonabelian cosmic strings are discussed. Relevance to GUT breaking and thereby to cosmology is pointed out. Classification of cosmic strings are associated with the affine ADE Lie algebras.